Contribution
Which was agreed. The point, however, is this Bill’s purpose. Without amendments, it could end up being rather ineffective. What is a national sporting event? If we have another Olympics, the rules will have changed. In effect, the nation is ceded to the International Olympic Committee for Olympic and Paralympics, and for 60 days they rule. Those rules and the detail will change the next time.
The critical issue with the London Olympics and Paralympics was the location. Everything else needed to be sorted, but without having a location identified, nothing gets off the ground. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was quite right: if Scotland wants to host a major football tournament, whatever else it has to do, one thing is sorting out Hampden Park. The investment and forward planning are critical. That is not a criticism of this Bill but a question about what it is actually for.
It seems to me that the Bill should be not simply for major events but for events that have to be bid for. That is where the competitive advantage would be given. I will give an example: it looks like the Rugby League may be excluded under the definitions, and that is an absurdity. We are successful in winning bids for the Rugby League. But what we are not necessarily successful at, and which this Bill could assist with, is getting the deals with the locations and the venues that would allow an expanded Rugby League using different stadiums. The transport changes, for example, could revolutionise the possibilities of the locations. This would be hugely important for the sport and for the country. There will need to be a lot of detailed scrutiny on this.
I turn to ticket touting. What is ticket touting? Seat Unique uses dynamic pricing. The price for Everton v Leeds United last season was £99, while the price for Bournemouth v Leeds United was £564. It uses dynamic pricing and has a contract—I believe across the whole of the Premier League now, and with Wembley—and it is given large numbers of tickets to sell and it profits on dynamic pricing. What is the difference between ticket touting—for example, if I sell a ticket to a mate and charge him for the fuel to get down there—and what Seat Unique is doing? The danger is that, if we do not get the detail right, we are encouraging legitimised ticket touting. That is how organised crime is involved; it is not buying off individuals on street corners. Organised crime involves buying significant numbers of Premier League tickets internationally and dealing them. If you want to go to certain stadiums in London, it will cost you £800 but you can be guaranteed a ticket to any match, but you are going to be buying those tickets abroad. If you talk to the people who monitor this, including the police, this is serious organised crime. Getting the detail right, therefore, is absolutely essential.
On trading, what will happen to the person who writes the Square Ball fanzine and sells it at my club? It costs £1 or £2, prices vary, and they sell it on the street corner. Are they going to be restricted for certain fixtures? That is the danger of the mission creep that has been referred to. If we take a stadium like the Emirates, the local community makes money by entrepreneurship—by selling or by hiring out facilities to memorabilia salespeople. I know some of them around my club, and they are the real small businesses, the micro-businesses. They are not big commercial concerns; they never will be and they never want to be. Another example is the person making incredible food to sell, rather than the official food. Restricting this in any way would be catastrophic. Some of our big stadiums are located within communities which are not benefiting. We should be doing the opposite and encouraging that kind of sale. As Peter Lowy, who is developing the stadium at Leeds United, said to me when he arrived, “Why can’t you buy a kebab or a samosa outside the stadium?” It is because the small businesses are a slight distance away; they could be brought in. Facilitating this should be part of the Bill. There is a way of doing it by allowing the local communities, the fan groups and others to have a bigger say, if it is done well. That means, however, getting this legislation absolutely right. The restricted trading zones are, therefore, significant.
The transport zones provision, though, is absolutely right in how it is conceived. If there is going to be a major event, planning out in advance the transport system, the infrastructure and what is close by will give a competitive advantage. If we are proposing that we will use XYZ stadiums for some kind of international competition, and we have that in place already, then we have a competitive advantage.
My final point is that the world of sport is changing. I hear on the grapevine that Mr Musk is after buying a Premier League club. That may well change a few things. The World Cup championship may become a lot bigger: it may become annual or move around the world, a bit like the prime boxing bouts that have already been referred to. These are major sporting events. There are one-offs that are significant; we can build into this the planning for them, if we use our ingenuity.
It is a good Bill in principle, but if the detail is wrong it will be a bad Bill, and it is therefore quite an exciting one to be looking at. If we get it right, we build a competitive advantage, but that includes building in the community, building in the fan groups and building in the infrastructure investment demands, so that we begin to win on the big competitions.